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Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

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Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#221

Post by throwaway21320 »

sjtindell wrote: post #211
Angostura wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So read something like The Economist or the paper version of the NYT?

The NYT I definitely now class with all the rest. In my opinion The Economist stands alone as the only publication I can trust to be nuanced and informative.

I agree that The New York Times can be pretty terrible (a lot depends on the reporters and editors of a particular piece), but I have to say that I also find The Economist to be pretty shallow and often wrong. The best part about The Economist is its breadth (a lot of stories from all over the world), but a story about a water purification project in Uganda (for example) isn't going to be useful for most Americans (and I assume Ugandans would have better sources to read). It's mostly infotainment.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#222

Post by throwaway21320 »

jfengel wrote: post #215
dave5104 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how books really solve that. If I was interested in following the recent impeachment, what books am I going to read? I'm sure there will be plenty available within the year, but that's a little late for anyone who wants to know what's going on right now.

That's precisely it. There will be plenty of books available before November, and their authors will have had a few months to digest what happened and its aftermath. And November is the only time it really matters. Until then, you can shake your tiny fist, but in November you get to make a choice that counts, literally. You could follow it in real-time for the entertainment value, if you want. But if you actually wan…

> But if you actually want to make an informed choice when it matters, you'll have no trouble finding a book that summarizes it, and it will take far, far less time than trying to keep up with it (and remember it all come November).

I also doubt there are a lot of people who were following the impeachment because they wanted to decide whether or not to vote for Trump. If you already know how you'll vote, following the day to day political battles is, as you said, merely entertainment.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#223

Post by jfengel »

clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #165
INTPenis wrote: post #89

What gave me the most satisfaction is quitting the news. Incidentally I don't have or use any social media either. Except imgur and sometimes among the funny memes I get news. But I'm afraid for people I meet who always remind me of all the awful things they've seen in the news. I'm aware of none of this until someone tells me. And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a c…

Yeah. So what if the Reichstag burned down? Doesn't really change my day to day life.

You are presumably being sarcastic, but in a lot of ways it illustrates the point. The Reichstag fire was a false-flag operation, used to justify an emergency decree. People who read the news were misinformed about the event.

By that time, it was already too late. They had elected a paranoid, despotic government a month before, and the fire itself was merely a fig leaf for things they were going to do anyway. They'd been using the media as propaganda for years, counting on people who read newspaper articles to be easily terrorized, and vote in a government that promised security.

It wasn't the fire that changed their lives. It was their belief in the daily media. If they took a calmer, more skeptical approach, things might have turned out better for them.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#224

Post by r00fus »

anderber wrote: post #101
INTPenis wrote: post #89

What gave me the most satisfaction is quitting the news. Incidentally I don't have or use any social media either. Except imgur and sometimes among the funny memes I get news. But I'm afraid for people I meet who always remind me of all the awful things they've seen in the news. I'm aware of none of this until someone tells me. And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a c…

I absolutely understand what you're saying. But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable. If everyone follows the advice of avoiding the news, what effect would that have in our Govenment?

> But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable.

This falls into the "circle of concern > circle of influence" problem identified by Covey.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#225

Post by godelski »

PTOB wrote: post #220
godelski wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I suggest consuming news through text rather than video? In fact, the more boring the better. I see a big issue is that the news is frequently emotive based. In some cases this is helpful, when terrible stuff is going on. Other cases it makes mundane things seem worse. Or it makes things that don't affect us and/or we have no control over emotionally important. The latter is particularly harmful, imo. A lot of th…

Where do you get the boring stuff? Please, I'm drowning here.

To be honest, most of the major news sources have the boring stuff. The actual issue is that what goes viral and is passed around are opinion articles. I particularly like Reuters, they seem more middle of the road in terms of bias. But I think one of the keys is to read from both sides. You don't have to agree with the side that you don't lean towards, but it is extremely helpful to know the content that those people are ingesting. If you want nuance, you really have to try to see things from other peoples' perspectives. This is pretty hard. I think being "so connected" this is actually more challenging, because it is easier to find your niche inside of a niche inside of a niche and stay there, instead of having to deal with different niches.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#226

Post by ixtli »

powowowow wrote: post #193
sykick wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem as I see it is that it is almost impossible to be informed enough to hold people accountable. In the U.S. at least the news is almost always of the form: “ Person from party A (which you are a member of) destroys person from Party B”. Or, “Party B seeks to destroy Issue C”. There is virtually no nuance in the reporting. There’s no dissection. For example, the situation with Syria is quite complicated as T…

> There is virtually no nuance in the reporting. If you want to read ad-supported news, then you will be stuck with news that is intended to have the lowest possible production costs, and garner the most possible eyeballs. This business does not support nuance, because nuance is expensive and less audacious. Nuanced reporting exists on essentially every topic that it is possible to care about, but it is often in smal…

the issue with the "i dislike mainstream media" argument is that its usually made by people who have a simultaneous and unspoken desire to have the "correct" information and opinions gift wrapped and personally delivered to them.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#227

Post by themagician »

According to my phone I spend about 5-10 minutes a week on all social media combined (with YouTube being the big outlier, but I watch mostly on the TV now).

FB, IG, Twitter, Snapchat… I check them once a week, if that. I think I only keep FB around for some SSO stuff and a few API integrations that I use for work.

About two years ago I went all out and just turned off notifications for _everything_. Not just social media, but news, email, and even text messaging. I have a favorites list that has a few contacts on it that I let through and for emergencies and stuff like that, but in general my phone doesn't do _anything_ unless I receive a call from someone on my contact list. And I guess calendar reminders and bank notifications.

It's awesome.

I get a print version of The Economist once a week. I catch up on the news via podcasts on the weekend or when I feel like it. I probably spend a few hours a week between HN, reddit and The Verge but that's about it. Everything is on my terms and I'm never going back.

You don't realize how terrible everything is for you until you get rid of it all and then you start to wonder why you even bothered with that shit in the first place. IMO notifications just need to go away completely. Unless it's an emergency of some kind there really is no reason why you need notifications in your life.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#228

Post by keenmaster »

ralmidani wrote: post #213
keenmaster wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the benefits of social media is supposed to be transparency, and I believe that. However, isn't it an indictment of global callousness that so many people have seen Assad's destruction of Syria and no one is helping? In fact, Russia's bot armies far outnumber Syrian refugees on Facebook, and they're spreading confusion on the whole situation. They're making it seem like Syria is some sectarian black hole, wher…

Thank you for your kind sentiments! I do what I can. I think most decent people who aren’t blinded by ideology are sympathetic when they find out what is going on. Two Syrian documentaries made it to the Oscars this Sunday, although disappointingly a film with an Obama association was given the prize. I think it’s important to distinguish between regular people on the one hand and politicians and bureaucrats on the o…

For those curious, here is a free link to For Sama, one of the Oscar-nominated documentaries mentioned: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/for-sama/

It is also available on the PBS Video app. It has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#229

Post by dba7dba »

INTPenis wrote: post #89

What gave me the most satisfaction is quitting the news. Incidentally I don't have or use any social media either. Except imgur and sometimes among the funny memes I get news. But I'm afraid for people I meet who always remind me of all the awful things they've seen in the news. I'm aware of none of this until someone tells me. And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a c…

I stopped reading news a long time ago. IF I click on a news to read, I usually head to the comments section first and don't even bother reading the news.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#230

Post by im3w1l »

coderunner wrote: post #29

As an aside, if anyone has any unusual things that you have done that have helped with depression, please mention them. I've done the usual route of therapy and meds but that didn't help with my depression or suicidal thoughts. Thanks in advance.

Regular exercise, quitting a job I didn't like (biggest win, took me out of a depression), removed myself from an extremely negative friend (this happened for other reasons, but I noticed after it left me happier).

What I aspire to and think would leave me happier is taking a more deliberate approach to hanging out with friends than my current just going with the flow (and forgetting to hang out with people out of sight).

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